


This World is Not Conclusion

by 1863



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Confessions, Crisis of Faith, Forgiveness, Gen, Internal Conflict, Post-Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29039805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1863/pseuds/1863
Summary: Beskar, leather, lies—nothing can withstand the gaze of an Armourer.
Relationships: The Armorer (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 56





	This World is Not Conclusion

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: 100 words of undeserved comfort.
> 
> The title is from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name.

She’s still there, in the old covert on Nevarro, when Din finally comes back. There’s no pause at all as she works at the forge, her movements every bit as strong and as fluid as the molten beskar she works with precise, practised skill. Nevertheless, Din knows that he’s been seen.

“Armourer,” he greets, and kneels by the forge, head bowed. 

For several long minutes, the only answer is the clang of her hammer and the roar of the flames. The sound is oddly comforting and Din closes his eyes; it’s been some time since he’s heard it, and it’s almost painfully familiar to him—as much a sound of home as the hum of the Razor Crest’s engines used to be. He hears the Armourer’s footsteps draw near but doesn’t open his eyes, nor lift his head.

“Your quest,” she says. “It is complete?”

“Yes.” Din swallows, throat unexpectedly dry. “Grogu—the child—he is with his people, now.” 

“Grogu,” the Armourer repeats. “You gave him a name?” 

Din shakes his head. “No. He had one already.”

“I see.” 

There’s a pause after that, long enough that Din's eyes flicker open and he lifts his head. It's then, and only then, that her hand closes around his upper arm, her grip strong and secure.

“You still wear your signet,” the Armourer adds. She stares down at him, fingers tightening, gloved palm pressing into the figure of the mudhorn skull she’d welded to Din’s pauldron herself. “You are still a clan of two.”

Din shakes his head. “He’s gone—”

“A clan,” she interrupts, “is a clan, regardless of whether they occupy the same space. Do not make the mistake of believing that being apart is the same as being alone.” She gestures around the room, where there are still a few pieces of old, scarred armour piled into a corner, yet to be melted into bars or repurposed for other things. “The covert is gone,” she says, “but I am not alone.” 

She turns to look at him and again the silence stretches out, until Din closes his eyes and lowers his head again. It’s pointless, of course; her gaze has always been able to pierce through any barrier to see down to every truth, no matter how deeply it’s been buried. Beskar, leather, lies—nothing can withstand the gaze of an Armourer. How else could they know what sigils to bestow, and when and to whom to bestow them? How else could they create armour that fits every Mandalorian so perfectly? 

“I’ve done,” Din starts, but has to stop for a moment, a sudden pressure in his chest making his throat contract. It’s like the words are stuck there, lodged beneath his breastbone, choking him from the inside out. He bows his head even further, bent over almost double now. His helmet feels heavier than it ever has.

“What have you done?” 

The Armourer’s voice is quiet. Not gentle—it’s never gentle—but it’s soft enough that Din is able to take a breath and say what he came here to say. 

“I removed my helmet in the presence of others.” He licks his lips and forces himself to straighten up, to lift his head and take whatever punishment the Armourer deems appropriate for his—transgression. Transgressions, plural. “Twice,” he adds hoarsely, because whatever Mayfeld said on Morak, Din is still fully aware of what he did, and what it should cost him. Lying to himself in the heat of the moment is one thing, but lying to the Armourer in her own forge is another.

His words are met with silence. Din holds out for as long as he can—and there was a time, once, not so long ago, when his life was confined to the endless cycle of fobs and petty criminals, to the enclosed spaces of underground tunnels and an old, battered gunship, when his sole driving force was taking whatever scraps were offered to him in order to support the covert—there was a time, once, when Din might have outlasted her, or come close to it. But now, after everything—finding the kid, keeping the kid, protecting the kid, and then letting the kid just walk away—whatever’s left of Din’s self-possession feels brittle and bare, worn so thin that even something as simple as silence is enough to break it clean in two.

“Please,” he says, the word scraping painfully over his dry, dry throat. “Please—”

“What is it that you want from me?” Her voice is even softer now; softer, perhaps, than Din has ever heard it. “Judgement? Penance?” She pauses. “Forgiveness?” 

“No,” Din says quickly. Too quickly, he realises, when the Armourer suddenly straightens up, staring at him so intently that Din almost flinches. Nothing escapes the Armourer’s eyes. Nothing, not even truths he’s yet to admit to himself, let alone anyone else. “I broke the Creed,” he adds. “I don’t deserve forgiveness.” 

“What you do or don't deserve is not up to me.” She gestures to his helmet. “I make the armour that protects you, that marks you as a child of Mandalore. But you are the one who wears it, Din Djarin. And you alone must decide.”

“Whether I deserve to be forgiven?” 

“No.” The Armourer presses one hand against the cuirass that covers her chest, then reaches out and runs her fingers over the lower edge of Din’s helmet. The movement is so similar to the way the kid touched his face—his bare, uncovered face—that Din briefly closes his eyes. “No,” the Armourer repeats. “You alone must decide whether to continue wearing it.”

Din stares up at her, uncomprehending.

“You took the Creed,” she adds. “You said the words, you followed the Way—”

“One Way,” Din says. The Armour goes very, very still. “There are others. Aren’t there?”

It’s a long time before she answers. Din watches her still and silent form, the flames of the forge behind her casting strange shadows over her helmet, making the horns that crown it seemingly move with a life of their own. 

“Yes,” she says eventually. “There are.” There’s an odd note in her voice now, one that Din has never heard in it before, and he thinks it might be something like apology, or maybe something like regret. “And thus you understand my meaning even more clearly.” She returns to the forge, picking up her tools, resuming her work. “Are you a Mandalorian, or are you not?” When Din doesn’t answer, she shakes her head. “You didn’t come here for me to pass judgement on you. You came here so that I might spare you from having to pass judgement on yourself. And that is something I cannot give you.” 

She says it without accusation, just a simple statement of fact, but when Din still can’t make himself say anything in response, she takes a sudden deep breath and puts her tools back down. 

“You bear a heavy burden,” she adds quietly. “You always have. The events that brought you to us, your placement in the Fighting Corps, your orders to join the Bounty Guild…” She trails off. “And you bore them all with great forbearance. But you are no longer a Foundling, Din Djarin. Now you lead a clan of two. And leadership carries its own burdens.”

There’s no way the Armourer could know what happened on Moff Gideon’s ship, no way she can see the Dark Sabre that’s strapped to his hip and hidden in the folds of his cloak, but her voice now is tinged with an unexpected compassion that makes Din wonder how much she really knows. 

“If you have any doubts about who and what you are,” she adds, “then that armour does not belong to you. In this, at least, there is only one Way.” 

Din bows his head and swallows thickly. To give up his armour, to walk away from everything he’s ever known—

“Leave this place.” 

He looks up again in surprise. And despite the dark visor that conceals her eyes, Din knows that she’s staring right at him, and seeing right through him, too.

“You will not find your answers here,” she says, “nor should this be the place where you make your choice.”

“And if I were to choose…” Din takes an unsteady breath. “Would you still be here, if I came back to—” But he stops there, unable to get the words out, barely able to even think them inside his own head. 

“There will always be an Armourer,” she says. “This is the Way.”

Din remembers the first time he saw a forge, the first time a figure in a golden, horned helmet stared at him in wordless appraisal. He’d been afraid then, of that featureless, faceless mask, afraid of the person beneath it judging him and finding him wanting. Too young, too small, too weak. But instead, the Armourer took his hand and pressed something into his palm, and when Din saw what it was—the head of a mythosaur, strung on a strip of leather and wrought in pure, perfect beskar—Din knew he’d found a home.

Until recently, that Armourer—now long gone—had been the last person to see his uncovered face, the last person to see him as anything other than a helmeted, armoured Mandalorian. And now he’s in the presence of another Armourer, also watching him in silence, and also waiting for him to decide for himself where he belongs.

“This is the Way,” Din agrees. He stands up and takes a deep breath. “Thank you.”

The Armourer nods and resumes her work. “I wish you well, Din Djarin,” she says, “whatever path you choose to take.” 

The echoing clang of her hammer follows him through the tunnels as he leaves, and whether or not Din will ever come back to this place, he knows the sound of it will always remind him of home.


End file.
